Monday, March 28, 2016

Professors in the fields of business, law, and
engineering draw the highest salaries among faculty members who have tenure or
are on the tenure track, according to the results of an annual survey released
on Monday by the College and University Professional Association for Human
Resources.

Among full professors, faculty members in legal studies were the
best-compensated in the 2015-16 academic year, earning an average of just above
$145,000 across both private and public institutions. At the associate- and
assistant-professor levels, professors of business, management, and marketing
earned the most.

The overall median salary increase for faculty members was 2 percent — in
line with gains in previous years. Instructors on the tenure track earned
the biggest median salary bump from last year, at 2.2 percent.

The figures below are based on the salaries of tenured and tenure-track
professors at 743 public and private colleges nationwide.

Friday, March 25, 2016

A group of students, many of them minority students, held a protest Monday at Emory University over chalked messages
that appeared at many places on campus over the weekend in support of
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The Internet has not been kind to the
students (or Emory).

The demonstration, in which students reportedly said the chalkings made them
feel unsafe, eventually moved from the quad to the administration building in
search of James Wagner, Emory’s president. Wagner met with the students, and in
an email to the campus afterward, he said, “They voiced their genuine concern
and pain in the face of this perceived intimidation.”

“The students shared with me their concern that these messages were meant to
intimidate rather than merely to advocate for a particular candidate, having
appeared outside of the context of a Georgia election or campus campaign
activity,” he wrote. “After meeting with our students, I cannot dismiss their
expression of feelings and concern as motivated only by political preference or
oversensitivity. Instead, the students with whom I spoke heard a message, not
about political process or candidate choice, but instead about values regarding
diversity and respect that clash with Emory’s own.”

Most of the chalked messages were limited only to the word “Trump” or “Trump
2016,” though some students also reported seeing “Build a Wall” and “Accept the
Inevitable.” At some high schools and colleges, the word “Trump” has become a taunt used against minority students on campus,
along with graffiti including the candidate's name and swastikas. But at Emory,
while many would say “Build a Wall” is a taunt, most of the chalkings simply
said “Trump 2016.”

Right-leaning websites and blogs were some of the first to pounce -- on
students for what critics deemed excessive sensitivity and on the college's
president and administration for taking the students seriously. But criticism
spread all over. Even headlines from national news organizations like CBS,
which proclaimed, “University students 'in pain' after 'Trump
2016' chalked on campus,” seem to have a bit of an edge to them. Even
Trump-hating Gawker chimed in to say simply, “Don’t go to Emory.”

Many of those criticizing the Emory students said the messages were par for
the course in a campaign year and that if students can chalk their support for
Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, they should be able to chalk support for
Trump. Emory is now stressing that it has no plans to take action against
anyone for chalking, and that concerns were not because of the views of the
person who chalked but because some of the pro-Trump statements were not made
in places where chalking is permitted.

Now protesters are taking to social media to say critics have mischaracterized
their actions.

“No one at Emory is afraid of chalk,” wrote one student who said she participated in the protest.
“Students are upset by the environment of hatred that is created by seeing
'Trump 2016,' 'Accept the inevitable' and 'Build a wall' written all over
campus and dealing with an administration that doesn't seem to care about what
that implies for those who hold identities Trump has continuously been
attacking throughout his campaign.”

Many students, at Emory and elsewhere, are uniting behind a sort of social
media form letter expressing support for the Emory protesters. Dozens on
Facebook and Twitter have posted something identical or similar to a statement
reading: "If you'd like to stand in solidarity with us, please use this as
your status: 'I, a [identity] from [college/university/state/country], stand in
solidarity with the Black and Brown students at Emory, against the
intimidation, lies and deeply rooted racism that people of color continue to
face -- on their campus, nationwide and globally. #1969not1836
#BlackBrownAndHere.'"

One student who says he participated in the protest wrote, “As many people have pointed out, yes, Trump
supporters have the right to chalk and campaign for this racist and fascist
presidential candidate. But we also have a right to protest it …. None of the
protesters wanted to deny anyone 'freedom of speech.' People were concerned
that there was vandalism and it took hours before the chalkings were washed out.”
He went on to write that the protest Monday was about a host of issues in
addition to the chalked messages, including “expanding the funding for
undocumented students, hiring more faculty of color, and generally expanding
resources for students of color.”

Still, as Josh Goodman, a member of the Emory College Republicans, pointed out on the Fox Newsshow The O’Reilly
Factor, it was the Trump chalkings that sparked these protests: “I’ve seen
a lot of support for Bernie Sanders in chalk, I’ve even seen pro-Black Lives
Matter support,” which “raised no controversy.”

Goodman also went on to express disapproval of the president's response to
the students. “The president, I think he legitimized their claim,” he said. “I
was pretty disappointed. I expected President James Wagner to come out fiercely
against this, to stand for First Amendment rights, to stand for this student’s
rights to support one of our two major parties’ political candidates, a
front-runner, and he didn’t.”

So far, it appears that no student had claimed responsibility for the
chalkings.

The Emory College Republicans Executive Board supports Ted Cruz and has previously condemned Donald Trump, writing in a statement,
“It is not American to advocate for discrimination against one’s countrymen
based on faith or national origin.”

Zak Hudak, editor in chief of the student newspaper, The Emory Wheel,
put out a call in a
letter he posted for students to share their opinions with him as the
paper’s editorial board works its way toward a stance. “I’ve heard criticisms
from this very pro-speech side that it’s wrong for me to even acknowledge the
feelings of fear and so forth of the protesters,” he said. The other side
reached out as well, calling for “more extreme measures” and saying “you just
don’t understand this.”

Speaking for himself, and not for the Wheel, Hudak said, “I
personally have taken a very strong stance in favor of the need to maintain
free speech and open discourse even when that’s painful.” But, “I’m in no way
against these protesters …. If we’re going to have freedom of speech, that
means we have the freedom to talk about whether we have freedom of speech.”

“This is genuine,” Hudak said. “This is a genuine thing [the protesters] are
feeling. They’re afraid, they’re hurt, they’re not making this up. Nonetheless,
I have to default to the paramount placement of freedom of speech. There are
just no means by which you can say you can’t support a presidential candidate
on campus.”

In a statement sent to Inside Higher Ed, the university said it
“has not identified the individual(s) responsible for placing chalking graffiti
in various campus locations earlier this week, and no follow-up action is
planned related to the incident. It’s important to note that chalkings by
students are allowed as a form of expression on the Emory campus but must be
limited to certain areas and must not deface campus property -- these chalkings
did not follow guidelines -- that’s the issue regarding violation of policy,
not the content."

Thursday, March 24, 2016

The Education Department’s Office
for Civil Rights brought needed attention to the problem of sexual assault and
harassment on college campuses with its 2011 letter telling
institutions to enforce the law. But in so doing, the office has created a slew
of new problems with implications for free speech and academic freedom. That’s
the premise of a lengthy new report from the American Association of University
Professors.

Drawing on the history of Title IX
of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits gender discrimination in
education, the report argues for a more judicious application of the law across
academe. The report is an attempt to reshape discussion of Title IX -- to put
substantially more emphasis on due process.

“Success stories about compelling
universities to address problems of sexual assault, such as those recounted by
student campus groups, are matched by reported cases in which university
administrators fail to punish gross and repeated sexual harassment, or where Title
IX administrators from the [Education Department] and within the university
overreach and seek to punish protected academic speech,” reads “Uses and
Abuses.”

Such cases, it continues, “have
compromised the realization of meaningful educational goals that enable the
creation of sexually safe campuses; they also have upended due process rights
and shared governance in unprecedented ways.”

“Uses and Abuses” was written by
members of AAUP’s Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure and its Committee on
Women in the Profession. It at no point suggests that Title IX hasn’t done
good, or even more harm than good. But it argues that the law has endangered
free speech, academic freedom and due process since at least 2011, with the
publication of the Education Department’s Dear Colleague letter.

While the line between potentially
offensive speech and conduct had been blurring for years under various legal
interpretations of Title IX, the paper says, the 2011 directive “conflates
conduct and speech cases” by “broadly” defining sexual harassment under Title
IX as “ranging from the most serious conduct of ‘sexual violence’ (including
rape, sexual assault, sexual battery and sexual coercion) to speech-based
hostile environment.”

AAUP also accuses OCR of granting
Title IX more tentacles by saying that enforcement will focus not only on
student-on-student sexual violence but all types of harassment cases --
including speech or conduct of a sexual or nonsexual but gender-based nature.

The association notes that it in its
letter, the department didn’t include any statement or warning about the “need
to protect academic freedom and free speech in sexual harassment cases,
including hostile environment allegations.” With that “conflation of sexual
violence (which is also criminal conduct) and sexual harassment (including
hostile environment based on speech), protections of academic freedom seem to
have been relegated to the background or ignored completely.”

“Uses and Abuses” also accuses the
Education Department of mandating a new evidentiary standard in that 2011
letter, telling universities to use a “preponderance of evidence” (more likely
than not) assessment of Title IX cases instead of a higher, “clear and
convincing” standard. The shift, “which was in fact a substantive change, has
produced significant and worrisome effects on the enforcement of Title IX,”
AAUP says.

The association also expresses
concern over a separate OCR statement from 2001 that seems to favor the due
process rights of the complainant over the respondent. The statement says, in
part, that “schools should ensure that steps to accord due process rights do
not restrict or unnecessarily delay the protections provided by Title IX to the
complainant.”

Approximately 169 colleges and
universities are now being investigated by the civil rights office for possible
violations of Title IX. Documents from completed investigations reveal a
“pattern” of offenses, from failing to respond to allegations of sexual assault
until a formal complaint is filed to failure to consider whether there was a
need for a broad response, even after complainants requested confidentiality or
chose not to proceed with formal or informal resolution processes. In other
words, the office may make a determination about a hostile environment even when
there is insufficient evidence to support the underlying complaint.

The AAUP report cites a “frenzy of
cases in which administrators’ apparent fears of being targeted by [the office]
have overridden faculty academic freedom and student free speech rights.” It
indicts the “corporate university” for succumbing to worries of getting sued or
failing to please the “client,” or student, at the expense of faculty rights.

“Uses and Abuses” reviews a number
of cases in which Title IX has had an arguably negative impact on faculty
members. They include that of Patricia Adler, a professor
of sociology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who in 2013 said she was
pressured to resign after Title IX administrators sat in unannounced on a
course. They said students had complained about a class she’d long taught on
sexual deviance, which involved teaching assistants dressing up as prostitutes
to talk about their characters. The university ultimately rescinded its
ultimatum that Adler retire early or stop teaching the class, according to the
report, but academic freedom already had been chilled.

In another example, Louisiana State
University last year terminated Teresa Buchanan, an
associate professor of education, for using “salty language” in her classroom
-- even though she had been approved by fellow faculty members and her dean for
promotion to full professor. She was found by university human resources
personnel to have violated sexual harassment policies and the Americans With
Disabilities Act. Buchanan is suing the university.

Echoing previous AAUP statements on trigger warnings, the
report cites increasing calls that they be invoked prior to in-class references
to sex or gender -- and slams subsequent institutional requirements that they
be included in syllabi or elsewhere. “The chilling effect such requirements
pose constitutes a serious threat to academic freedom in the classroom,” the
report says. (Also criticizing interpretations of federal law that faculty
members are mandated reporters of sexual assault, AAUP says, “How can scholars
share their knowledge and research with students if unable to assure privacy
when a disclosure by a student to a teacher might happen as part of the
student’s learning process?”)

Saying that Title IX overreach
impacts not only classroom activity but also extramural speech and research,
AAUP questions Northwestern University for investigating Laura Kipnis, a
professor of media studies there, under Title IX for her public comments about
generational shifts in attitudes about what constitutes sexual assault or
harassment. Because Kipnis alluded to a separate, ongoing Title IX case on her
campus involving another professor in an op-ed in The Chronicle of Higher
Education, she was accused by of creating a hostile environment for the
students involved. Kipnis eventually was cleared of wrongdoing, but her institution
faced backlash for even entertaining the charges against her. Universities
maintain, meanwhile, that they must investigate such claims to comply with the
law.

Asked what latitude universities
have to dismiss claims that appear to infringe upon academic freedom, Risa
Lieberwitz, a professor of law at Cornell University and chair of the report
committee, said Northwestern and other institutions err in pursuing some cases
beyond an initial review. To subject professors and others involved to extensive
interviews when academic freedom is clearly at play can only chill it for all,
she said.

In assessing cases such as Kipnis’s,
Buchanan’s and others, Lieberwitz said, “We found that there was a pattern of
overly broad use of Title IX, particularly with regard to speech that should be
protected by academic freedom, and in some instances at public institutions
where you also have First Amendment concerns.”

The investigation also found related
violations of or at least disregard for shared governance or developing
policies around Title IX with the input of professors themselves. She noted
that AAUP has since 2011 objected to the “preponderance of evidence" standard,
for example.

To make up for that lack of input,
AAUP’s report proposes a series of recommendations targeted at different
groups. The Education Department is urged to:

Interpret Title IX as protecting students from sex
discrimination, while also protecting academic freedom and free speech in
public and private educational institutions.

Increase its attention to protecting due process in all
stages of Title IX investigations and proceedings.

Refine its compliance process to develop the potential
to work with universities to create policies and procedures for receiving
and addressing Title IX complaints in ways that address problems of sexual
discrimination while also protecting academic freedom and free speech and
providing due process for all parties.

In another set of recommendations,
AAUP says college and university administrators should:

Strengthen policies to protect academic freedom against
incursions from overly broad harassment policies and other regulatory
university protocols.

Distinguish speech that fits the definition of hostile
environment from speech that individuals may find hurtful or offensive but
is protected by academic freedom.

Include faculty in all stages of development,
implementation and enforcement of sexual harassment policies.

Clarify their relationship to the criminal justice
system and work in coordination with it.

Consider adopting restorative justice practices for
some forms of misconduct.

Be aware of potential bias on the basis of race, gender
inequity, class and sexual orientation in the claims and enforcement
process to further secure the rights of complainants and the accused.

Encourage and improve the conditions of
interdisciplinary learning on campus by funding gender, feminist and
sexuality studies, as well as allied disciplines, to meaningfully address
inequality.

Additionally, faculty members should
participate through shared governance to develop policies and practices that
address problems of sex discrimination, while also protecting academic freedom,
free speech and due process, and act in solidarity with student attempts to
alleviate campus inequalities, according to the report.

Many of the recommendations and the
report overall pleased the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which
has for years flagged what it viewed to be Title IX overreach in regard to
speech.

Samantha Harris, a lawyer at the
organization, said in an interview that “the fact that a major academic freedom
organization is coming out in support of academic freedom rights in the
classroom [vis-à-vis Title IX] is huge. … I hope that this strengthens the
resolve of faculty members to keep addressing challenging topics with their
students and not alter their classroom work due to a fear of censorship.”

Harris also applauded the report’s
emphasis on due process for not only the complainant but also the respondent.
Since 2011, FIRE has heard from a number of students complaining that they’ve
been denied due process or expelled from campus “without a meaningful
opportunity to see the evidence against them.” But colleges and universities
often act precipitously, she said, because falling out of compliance with the
civil rights office risks the withdrawal of public funding.

Brett Sokolow, president and CEO of
the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management and an expert in Title
IX proceedings, was less complimentary of the report. He said that while
there’s no doubt many colleges and universities are misinterpreting and
misapplying Title IX, AAUP unfairly places too much blame on the federal civil
rights office. For example, he said, the report accuses the office of mandating
a new evidentiary standard that the vast majority of colleges and universities
already were using. More than that, he said, the paper doesn’t address the
major societal shift toward new expectations for speech and behavior related to
sex and gender and a host of other topics.

“Members of the campus community are
becoming much more intolerant of minor to midlevel misconduct by faculty
members,” Sokolow said, referencing recent cases at the University of
California at Berkeley, for example, in which male employees accused of
harassment had received some form of university
punishment but were pressured to resign by students and colleagues who said the
university hadn’t done enough.

“There is a public sentiment rather
than rules-based approach that this report doesn’t recognize,” Sokolow said.
“Being that creepy guy has suddenly become not OK.”

Jennifer Freyd, a professor of
psychology at the University of Oregon whose investigations of sexual assault
on her campus have led to clashes with administrators, said
she applauded the report for highlighting the need for more, interdisciplinary
education about what constitutes a positive learning environment, and for
endorsing the idea that institutional equity should be assessed through a
variety of lenses -- in addition to sex and gender.

But she said AAUP probably
downplayed the extent to which sexually hostile words alone can impact
students’ sense of safety and educational access. A recent study of 525
graduate students conducted by Freyd and two colleagues now in press suggested
that 38 percent of female and 23 percent of male participants had experienced
sexual harassment from faculty or staff, and that such exposure was
significantly correlated with negative outcomes for these students, for
example.

Like Sokolow, Freyd said many of the
AAUP’s concerns seemed to be based on “interpretations of interpretations” of
Title IX, not the law itself.

“Title IX was sitting there for
years, not being particularly applied in this way at all,” she said. “Up until
recently, if you said, 'Title IX,' most people would think of [equal access in]
sports. But now it’s brought so much attention and publicity to assault and
harassment -- so it’s important to keep in mind that this is a relatively new
development, and overall it’s a great development.”

Of course, with new developments
come “growth pains,” and protecting faculty members’ academic freedom is
paramount, Freyd said. “But in fact women can’t have access to equal education
if they’re harmed by sexual harassment and violence. This is a potentially
powerful tool to ensure civil rights.”

Asked if the problems associated
with Title IX may be more linked to what some have called the student
censorship movement, or student demands to be protected from offensive speech,
than the law itself, Lieberwitz said AAUP is concerned about the broader issue.
But it’s still time to pause and assess the impact of Title IX on faculty
rights.

“This is an area where very real
concerns about sexual assault and harassment have been conflated with issues of
speech that may fall within the purview of academic freedom and protected
speech,” she said. “AAUP policy has long recognized the need to seriously
address problems of assault and harassment, and the ability to deal with those
problems can and should co-exist with the ability to protect academic freedom
and due process.”